(Urban architecture study)

Maurice Lapp

An early oil painting on board by Sonoma County artist Maurice "Maury" Lapp, done in the late 1950s when the artist was experimenting with analytical cubism and linear abstraction in his city/landscapes. This work is signed in the lower left.

The composition is a fractal cityscape, featuring the staccato formation of a gridded, cubist-like neighborhood in this early oil painting on board by Chicago-born artist Maury Lapp. Done around 1955, Lapp, then living and teaching in Oakland, California, was experimenting with analytical cubism and linear abstraction in his cityscapes/landscapes. An example of 1950s American modernism, this oil is both expressive and contained, capturing the artist’s desire to deconstruct - and rebuild - the familiar.

Maurice Lapp, painter and educator, was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 17, 1925. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned both a BFA and MFA. Maury studied painting abroad in 1950 on a Ryerson Foreign Travel Fellowship, and in 1956 received a Fulbright Grant.

After settling in Northern California in 1952, Lapp began teaching painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1956 he moved north to Santa Rosa, California where he joined the art faculty at the Santa Rosa Junior College. He remained at the Junior College until his retirement in 1992, but his teaching career did not end there. Lapp was a popular instructor and continued to mentor part-time until the age of 87. He had a strong work ethic and painted daily.